August sales through electronics and appliance stores were up 0.8% from July, down 3.4% from August 2019, reported the National Retail Federation Wednesday. Total retail sales in August were up 0.6% from July, 2.6% from a year earlier, said NRF. August online sales growth was flat compared with July, up 20.1% from August 2019. “August was topsy-turvy as COVID-19 brought a lot of shifts and uncertainty regarding back-to-school spending and other issues,” said Chief Economist Jack Kleinhenz. “Retail spending habits have remained largely consistent and stable these past few months since stores began to reopen.”

The FCC Office of Engineering and Technology extended a waiver for equipment maker Radwin to use higher power levels for stations providing broadband in the 5.15-5.25 and 5.725-5.85 GHz bands. The waiver extends for 60 days or until a decision is made on a more expansive waiver. The higher power permitted three ISPs to provide “improved system performance and increased capacity to enable service to more customers simultaneously,” said a Tuesday order in docket 20-128: “This improved performance and capacity particularly benefits customers in remote areas by providing better access to important services such as telehealth during the current pandemic.”

The COVID-19 pandemic impeded the 8K ecosystem’s progress by “up to a year,” estimated 8K Association Executive Director Chris Chinnock on an association webinar Tuesday. Events are being held virtually, so there’s “not as much exposure," he said: “High-profile sporting events are kind of what raise the value of 8K to consumers and professionals,” yet the 8K-centric 2020 Tokyo Olympics were canceled. Deploying 8K streaming services will be key to bringing the technology to mass scale, as it was for 4K, said Chinnock, acknowledging that “bigger players” in the over-the-top space won’t launch 8K service offerings for at least two to three years. The brainchild of Samsung, the group has been unable to sign 8K TV rivals LG and Sony as members. 8KA is starting to see smaller OTT services launch 8K offerings, including in Europe, said Chinnock.

AT&T CEO John Stankey stressed the importance of fiber to 5G and said parts of how the carrier does business will change long term due to the pandemic, at a Goldman Sachs virtual conference Tuesday. “When you have a great 5G network, you’re deploying a lot of fiber.” Stankey said the wireless industry is very competitive now, and has been for years. AT&T is holding up under the stress of the pandemic, he said. “The new normal for AT&T probably isn’t dramatically different than the new normal for everybody else,” he said. “COVID was kind of a shot of adrenaline,” he said: “It just accelerated things that were happening.” AT&T is becoming more of a virtual company, Stankey said. “We need people to be able to come in and collaborate and work and build relationships,” but “large parts of our business, they can be far more virtual than they were before,” he said.

Sixty-two percent of consumers plan to shop exclusively online this year, said Redpoint Global Tuesday. Half expect to spend the same as last year; 27% will cut back. Half plan to use buy online, pick up in store. Due to the pandemic, "much about retail has changed," the firm said: "Many of the digital trends that had been transforming the industry were accelerated, as was the demise of many classic retail brands. ... While the retail challenges are not new, the impacts during COVID-19 ran much deeper."

Work from home, remote learning and telemedicine are PCs' “core growth demand drivers” during the pandemic, Kevin Frost, general manager of HP’s consumer business, told a Deutsche Bank virtual conference Monday. “We see them absolutely extending” into 2021, he said of demand. HP estimates an installed base of 700 million PCs globally older than four years, said Frost. “This new world that we live in now” is speeding the “refresh cycle” of the devices because people “are needing to do things that are just harder to do” on older machines, whether it's holding Zoom meetings, streaming video or gaming, he said. It’s a myth that consumer PC demand is shifting toward the low end during pandemic buying, said Frost. Shifting consumers toward mobile gaming is “the single biggest thing we're doing,” he said. The supply constraints in laptop CPUs and display panels is “industry-wide,” said Frost. “We didn't expect demand to be this strong.” The supply shortage “is really a demand issue,” he said. CPUs and panels are “long-lead-time components,” he said. HP is experiencing “spot shortages” on processors and panels “across the board,” he said. The shortages are “broad, but I'm confident we're improving every day,” he said.

All Silicon Flatirons events in the 2020-21 academic year will be virtual because of COVID-19, the center at the University of Colorado-Boulder said Tuesday.

Citing the pandemic, the Fiber Broadband Association said Monday its 2020 Fiber Connect event, scheduled for Dec. 14-16, will be held virtually.

Pepperdine University upgraded 166 classrooms for remote learning using Panasonic “pan-tilt-zoom’ cameras, said the manufacturer Tuesday. Pepperdine announced the decision July 22 to hold the fall semester online, using Zoom. The cameras have HD video quality, 22X optical zoom and wide viewing angles, said Panasonic.

COVID-19 “has wreaked havoc on the U.S. economy since early March,” but S&P Global Ratings expects the U.S. wireless industry to “hold up reasonably well relative to other corporate sectors,” it reported Monday: “Competitive intensity among wireless companies should be relatively steady over the next couple of years as T-Mobile embarks on its integration of Sprint. However, there is still a lot of uncertainty.” New competition from cable operators and Dish Network “could constrain top line and margin improvement,” S&P said.